Yad Eliyahu marks 40 years since the second European Cup win, and this week Earl Williams, the star of the Strasbourg final, will celebrate his 70th birthday • In honor of the events, we held a gala poll among the great yellow players and coaches to resolve an issue: Who is the king under the baskets?
Earl Williams
Photo:
Gideon Markovich
In the shadow of its collapse in the Euroleague last month, Maccabi Tel Aviv marks 40 years (and even retro shirts have been put up for sale) for the team's second European Cup win in Strasbourg in 1981. The second trophy star was Earl Williams. It started with Williams' critical polo dunk in the final match against Collected a column, and ended in its huge final with 19 points and 18 rebounds.Tomorrow Williams will celebrate his 70th birthday, and in honor of the two historic events, we gathered the greatest players and coaches of Maccabi Tel Aviv for generations for a referendum on whether Williams is the great Axis players who wore yellow.
1 Earl Williams
Career in Israel
Maccabi Tel Aviv (1980-1983), Hapoel Tel Aviv (1986), Elitzur Ramla (1987, 1988), Maccabi Ramat Gan (1990), Hapoel Holon (1991), Bnei Herzliya (1994).
Degrees
In the Maccabi Tel Aviv uniform: European Championship and the Intercontinental Cup (1981), 4 championships, 4 trophies.
A particularly memorable moment
February 1983, Madrid.
The referees cancel Mickey Berkowitz's basket and a riot breaks out on the field.
Coins are tossed from the bleachers, Williams rushes towards the bleachers to vent his anger on the fans.
Ulsey Perry chases after him, grabs him and pushes him back onto the field.
Both are removed.
In short: the undisputed king of extensions
"I think I was the best player in Israeli basketball. Dot. When I came to Europe, I brought with me a level of basketball that is not used to seeing in Europe and Israel. I do not think Maccabi will ever have a player at my level" (Williams, Tel Aviv newspaper, 2001).
There were coaches who loved him, there were those who could not stand him, but could not be ignored.
He played four years in the NBA (Boston, Detroit and Phoenix) and held the record-breaking rebounds per game on average for decades.
After a year and a half in Stockholm, the late Maluk Makhrovsky landed him in Tel Aviv in October 1979. Williams led Maccabi Tel Aviv three times in a row to the European Champions Cup final, including winning in 1981 in Strasbourg against Synodina Bologna, where he excelled with 19 points and - 18 rebounds and was the undisputed king of expansions in Europe.
After another heroic victory at the Yad Eliyahu Sports Hall, he coined the legendary sentence: "Come on, Buddy Pax, around with Maccabi in the hand."
His conversion in the summer of 1981 in the United States led Earl to additional terms in Israel, especially with Effie Birnbaum, who coached him in three different teams. "He had the wrong stigma," Birnbaum recalled, "Contrary to popular belief, he liked to train and just did not like all the dreadlocks before. And in the indoor games he would lift the training to insane levels.
When I scolded him in Ramat Gan, Kenny Simpson told me: 'Leave him, he is the horse he rode on.'
Laughter of Fate, currently Earl Williams is in charge of discipline at a high school in New Jersey.
The late Tanhum Cohen Mintz
Career in Israel
Maccabi Tel Aviv (1972-1958), Elitzur Tel Aviv (1978-1972).
Degrees
In the Maccabi Tel Aviv uniform: 9 championships, 9 trophies, European Cup Winners' Cup final (1967); captain of the Israeli national team, who led it to the gold medal at the Asian Games (1966).
Particularly memorable moments
The first Israeli to play for the European team (1964);
The first Israeli star from the European team came to say goodbye to him in a festive retirement game (1975).
In short: from the fathers of modern basketball
"I was then 17 on Varese's squad for the 1967 European Cup Winners' Cup final, I saw him and marveled at his game. I know he is one of the basketball players who built modern basketball. That is why I have full appreciation for him."
This sentence is signed by Dino Mengin, the European basketball legend who played against all the great men of Israeli basketball for his generations and also saw the players of the axis in the current millennium.
Mengin chose Cohen Mintz as the greatest of them all.
"Since the sports broadcasts of Israeli television began in 1970, the late Cohen Mintz can only be heard and seen from the stories." He was Israel's youth tennis champion and then the late Yehoshua Rosin was impressed by his height (2.04) and offered to move to basketball, "said Yu. R. Yellows Shimon Mizrahi.
Mintz was unstoppable in the open.
The "silent giant" was called it then.
He was in the top five of the European team but at the same time was an outstanding officer in the IDF. He began his service as an officer in the tanks section of the Armed Forces and was one of the leaders of the Merkava project.
3 Kevin Maggie
Career in Israel
Maccabi Tel Aviv (1990-1984), Maccabi Rishon Lezion (1994).
Degrees
In the Maccabi Tel Aviv uniform: 6 championships, 5 trophies. Three times in the European Champions Cup final.
Particularly memorable moments
36 points for Bob Macado in Milan in 1987;
Blocked time and time again by Tony Kokoch and Dino Radja in the 1989 Munich final;
Shimon Amsalem was discovered thanks to his stop in the derbies.
In short: the Yellows' biggest scorer
"In 1984, Leon and Andel (a Jew from the Belgian basketball team, who helped Maccabi a lot in organizing its games with the Russian teams in Belgium; AS) called me and said: 'There is a great American player who plays in Zaragoza. "" Shimon Mizrahi said yesterday about the first time he heard about Kevin Magee, "that the late Mallock boarded a flight, saw him in Spain and was very impressed."
Maggie landed here as a replacement for the disappointing Frank Brykowski and became the greatest scorer of Maccabi Tel Aviv for generations. 25.7 points, which he scored in the Israeli league on average per game, are the highest average of all time.
His repertoire of shots was very limited and consisted mostly of an unstoppable half-distance shot.
There was a huge rebounder who came every night to work (and unlike Williams did not interfere with the nightlife in Tel Aviv), and in 1988 he declared in an interview with the newspaper "News": "I hate chickpeas."
Maggie led Maccabi Tel Aviv with a wonderful ability to three European finals when in the semi-final of the Final Four in Ghent 1988 he scored 34 points on the head of Vlada Debach. In the finals themselves he was already caught in Dino Mengin's (twice) and in Split's matchup zone - which reduced How large it was is evidenced by the fact that from the moment he was released in the summer of 1990, Maccabi collapsed in the 1990s until the discovery of Nate Huffman in 1999. In October 2003, Maggie was killed in a car accident in the United States.
The full rating
1
Earl Williams
2 The
late Tanhum Cohen Mintz (2014-1939)
3
Kevin Maggie (2003-1959)
4 Nate Huffman (2015-1975)
5
Nikola
Vujicic
6 The
late Avraham Schneur (1998-1928)
7
Sophocles Schorzianitis
8
Levan Mercer
9
Radisev Churchi
The ranks
Coaches:
Zvika Sharaf, Pini Gershon, Molly Katzourin, Efi Birnbaum, Guy Goodes
Past players
: Miki Berkovich, Doron Jamchi, Moti Aroasti, Hanan Keren, Moti Daniel, Gur Shelef, Tal Burstein
Management:
Amnon Avidan
(US Professional Committee (
Europe
)
:
Dino Mengin
chose not to rate:
Shimon Mizrahi ("Everyone was my son"), Tal Brody ("It is impossible to rate players at different times"), David Blatt ("Everyone is a special player")
